University of New Orleans University of New Orleans
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University of New Orleans Theses and
Dissertations Dissertations and Theses
5-14-2010
Inside, Outside
Inside, Outside
Ann Plicque
University of New Orleans
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Plicque, Ann, "Inside, Outside" (2010). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1165. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1165
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Inside, Outside
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the The University of New Orleans
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts in
Film, Theatre and Communication Arts Creative Writing
by
Ann Marie Michele Plicque
B.A. Journalism Northern Illinois University 1986
ii
Table of Contents
Abstract ... ii
Preface ...1
Chapter 1 Heart and mind ...5
Dangerous Propositions ...6
On This Page ...7
Bedroom Paradelle ...10
Circular Logic ...11
Swirl ...12
Losses in the Park ...13
Purity ...14
Nightwork ...15
Pious Grandiosity ...16
Chapter 2 Family ...17
Bicycling Drunk ...18
McComb, Mississippi Excavations ...20
In the Hardware Store ...21
Delinquent ...23
Listen Here ...24
Purpose ...25
Roll Bones ...26
Tethers ...27
Chapter 3 The World ...28
Bombardier ...29
Balance ...30
A 21st Century Crime Report ...31
Eye ...32
In Transit ...33
Public Intersection ...34
Mugging ...35
Wounds ...36
References/Bibliography...37
iii Abstract
The thesis ―Inside, Outside‖ is a poetry collection of twenty-five poems organized by
themes that fit into chapters titled ―Heart and Mind,‖ ―Family,‖ and ―The World.‖
1 Preface
―We shall all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,‖ Ben Franklin
said to John Hancock at the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This is
an apt statement for any thesis. To paraphrase, if the work doesn‘t hang together, it will hang the
author separately. So, what I have been thinking about concerning my poetry is that which makes
the center hold, because the kernel, around which a poem is spun, is key to what makes it
cohesive. The poems‘ themes help me to place them in my thesis. Most of the poems do not
completely fit one category or another, but I have tried to place them using a mixture of not only
their subject matter but also the thought and writing process I used to create them. The result—
the overall effect of the whole poem—has determined the three sections of the thesis.
The interior world of thought and interpersonal relationships in the section ―Heart and
Mind,‖ is addressed in poems such as ―Nightwork,‖ and ―On this Page,‖ but this section features
more mature themes as well such as ―Dangerous Propositions‖ and ―Bedroom Paradelle.‖ The
second section, ―Family,‖ harkens to childhood and stories set in a narrator‘s past, such as ―In
the Hardware Store,‖ or ―McComb, Mississippi Excavations,‖ and the final section, ―The
World,‖ spans past and present, and more subjects outside of the personal. But as often as past
connects to the present, the personal connects to the impersonal. ―Public Intersection‖ shows
how strangers make unwanted connections, but how these lead to personal revelations.
The thesis could as easily be called ―Inside, Outside, Inside,‖ for it reflects my way of
writing as well as thinking. Sometimes poems go full circle, as in ―Circuit,‖ others go in one
direction as ―Swirl,‖ does and ―Wounds,‖ in ―The World‖ section, definitely vacillates between
outer and inner worlds, past and present. ―Bicycling Drunk,‖ is placed in ―Family‖ because the
2
spend more time with their friends than with their ―real‖ families because of the suggested
dysfunction of their home lives. It could have ended up in ―The World‖ because the story is set
outside the bounds of the traditional nuclear family. But is family so ―nuclear‖ anymore?
I think what is strong in my work is my handling of narrative, my ability to move from
the broad to the specific or the specific to the general—to make logical leaps—and to include
evocative imagery. With poems such as ―Pious Grandiosity,‖ ―Swirl‖ and Circuit,‖ ―In the
Hardware Store‖ and ―McComb, Mississippi Excavations,‖ there are narrative, logical threads
hung on concrete images, as well as imagery that is slippery, ephemeral and more like language
poetry. My aesthetic purpose is to write in such a way that not all is revealed in one reading. I
don‘t want everything written on the line.
I‘ve used a compression of ideas and imagery to stir the imagination in ―McComb
Mississippi Excavations.‖ The narrator dreams of the fetus floating in formaldehyde and
wearing hair ribbons. Of course no fetus has hair or needs ribbons, but the association of the hair
ribbons evokes the image of the girl the fetus could have been. And although formaldehyde is no
perfume, again, the reference to it as perfume suggests the woman who will never wear it. She is
suspended in death, alive only in the dream of the narrator or as a bizarre prize for bored children
who search for the truth behind one family scandal. The vision is what the story reveals about
the narrator, the children, the familial relations. The poem evokes loss, of family members, of
possibilities smothered because of rigid moralities, and of how secrets affect the most innocent.
In this one poem, from the beginning, Aunt Anastasia is lost because she broke parental rules. I
don‘t explore what happened to her after the abortion. But I hint that if she kept the fetus in the
3
than a children‘s game. The poem moves from specific people to a dream of being buried, lost,
and frozen in time.
―Pious Grandiosity‖ is an Ars Poetica. The narrator fantasizes about being the world‘s
greatest poet, first bragging in exhaustive detail about how wonderful and exciting her life as a
poet has been, then withering to the poet‘s actual life—
scribbling in a dank atelier, enjoying neither fame nor fortune. It illuminates the passion the
narrator has for poetry despite the lack of success she has. It is humorous, ironic and sad. The
poem suggests that, despite the narrator‘s momentary delusions of grandeur, poetry should not be
relegated to the ―ivory tower.‖ The craft should be replete with recognition and rewards for the
talented. The narrator‘s great energy in a portrait of imaginary fame shrivels into the uselessness
of this gift, which is posited as more of a curse and a sentence to hell.
The part of this ―curse‖ that I find most challenging, yet supremely necessary and
satisfying, is creating stirring imagery. I see and try to hear a poem as I write it. When this
mental sight and sound combine into meaning that is clear, the result is vision—the literal visual
meanings and further extensions and associations beyond the literal imagery.
―Purity‖ is an example of a poem in which a reader—in this case a poetry judge—found
meanings somewhat different from my original idea. But when the work satisfies the reader, and
the reader grasps a version of my intent, I think the poem succeeds. If the reader finds something
that speaks to him or her that I didn‘t intend, but makes sense logically from the writing, this
enriches the poem for me as writer. Since everybody won‘t be writing to evaluate or comment on
my work, how can I know a poem is understood? This is the struggle of all poets—to determine
4
Some of my favorite poems in the collection are ―Purity,‖ ―McComb, Mississippi
Excavations,‖ ―Daddy and Mathematical Form,‖ ―Tethers,‖ ―Swirl,‖ ―Circuit,‖ ―Balance,‖
―Bombardier, 1944,‖ ―Roll Bones,‖ and ―Bicycling Drunk.‖ I love the wordplay of ―Circuit‖
and ―Swirl‖ and their metaphysical spin. I start small, spin out and return or start small and
reach out into the universe. ―Balance‖ is another Ars Poetica. It is a poem of a one-time
―performance art‖ event. The nature of that event reflects the nature of art.
Why does anyone create art? There‘s no guarantee of its permanence and it is usually a
financially impractical profession. It does not, in effect, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, build
housing, or save the environment. But it feeds the soul. And a satisfied soul can lend a hand in
the practical world. Good poetry is good business: connects humanity, sheds light, opens some
wounds and heals others. It can feed the hungry of spirit and the lonely, who feel stripped naked.
It puts a roof of solace over our heads at times. If my poems do this as they are read in journals
and other venues, I have conserved part of the intellectual and literary environment that allow
readers to examine the values and quality of their human connections within and outside
themselves.
This is why I use a variety of voices and scenarios in my poetry, just as Pablo Picasso
used a variety of styles and media. I become a dervish, a bicycling drunk boy, and Mississippi
children digging up a back yard. Though a single poem may only elucidate a few moments, the
body of my work covers a broader spectrum. I only have four poems of 25 in this collection that
are longer than one page because I prefer shorter poems. And I believe in form. Without the
backbone of form, meter and rhyme, free verse, which is my preferred choice of form, can be
sloppy. I have one sonnet in the collection. But whether using classic form or not, the best
5
and therefore more indelible. The skill it takes for such compression is a challenge. Similarly, in
every good poet and poem ―Something there is that doesn‘t love a wall,‖ as Robert Frost said.
Good poetry breaks down walls.
6 Dangerous Propositions
I know you can‘t fathom the power you have: so skilled, beautiful
funny and interesting to me.
I like the way your brain works: the way your legs curve at the calves, the nasal voice that twangs
from the big-nosed, deviated septum.
I love the spotted–leopard freckles covering you with a carpet of orange-tan, the neon-orange of your hair,
your eyes—the setting sun of your eyes when you rivet them on mine
as you talk passionately about insects and ecosystems in danger of disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico never to be seen
or heard from again.
And that Ph.D. you‘re working on in Geochemistry:
Past and present sources of terrestrial
marine and ancient sedimentary organic carbon
across the Continental Margin off the Mississippi River: the application of kerogen, lignin and pigment biomarkers,
sent me scrambling to the dictionary, the Internet to figure out how big that brain of yours really was.
You had the nerve to tell me I was smarter than you. Ha! Flattery won‘t get you anywhere.
But that mouth of yours will and those lips.
You‘re the most dangerous proposition of all the propositions.
7 On This Page
My heart leaches crimson- burgundy, like flowering bleeding heart vines
clotted in coils and dangles.
I collect modified leaves and stems, assemble them into a bouquet a bride would beam to carry up the aisle— except for the bloody hue.
But in past centuries bleeding heart was held by virgin brides
to keep them mindful
they traded pain for pleasure as they would heal
in light of future pain from childbearing.
And this is simply the reminder that my love for you is deep as the black-red in bleeding heart, pure as white light, green as young love, though I am seasoned and well-reasoned…
But young men like you appreciate experience and depth of feeling in a woman who brings more to the table than youth and beauty.
I will not glow on your arm
8 never worked a paying job
and never will-- well coiffed, fed, shod and pampered.
There is no equity on this page.
The women who lunch bleed too-- every month they aren‘t fertilized by husbands young or old, sick or well.
Meanwhile the ruddy flower weeps as passion flowers
did for Jesus on the cross; even he had a love: Mary Magdalene, known as Miriam.
The Bible dances round this, but humans wrote it, not God, and Christ was God and man: What of him was inhuman?
Surely not his body, made beautiful for all to see and love and listen to: How could Miriam resist; not fall?
And there are men jealous of men who love easily and laugh hard,
or smile that Mona Lisa smile— beautiful in its mystery,
perfect on men‘s countenances.
For men are beautiful as the finest women,
more childlike than children and more delicate.
9 for tickets their hearts
lead them to, and early deaths
in wars for turf and drugs.
They fear there will be no woman waiting at the end of the day, end of the lane, end of the road or tunnel: And I ask you on this page
to be the one to hold out your hand, pull me in; wind me tight
like the dense vine.
10 Bedroom Paradelle
The long feet versus small tailor hands surprised me. The long feet versus small tailor hands surprised me.
Warm hands cupped my breasts, cold feet used my ass for warmth. Warm hands cupped my breasts, cold feet used my ass for warmth. My ass, long cold, used for feet-warmth versus
warm, small tailor hands, my breasts cupped. The feet surprised me.
He ordered me to order him around. He ordered me to order him around.
Being that he was a big man, I found this unusual. Being that he was a big man, I found this unusual. Around this unusual order to him I found
that ordered being he was: He man. A big me.
But something about him was dear and boyish. But something about him was dear and boyish. Yet, something inside me rose to the challenge. Yet, something inside me rose to the challenge. But inside me something dear and boyish rose. The challenge to something was about him yet.
The warm, small tailor hands ordered me to order him around, yet I found this unusual being that he was a big-feet man. Long, cold feet versus hands. My cupped breasts;
hands used warmth for my ass.
11 Circular Logic
Chained to the bicycle, links between my feet, gears between my hands, seat beneath my seat, I pedal metal in revolution. Pushing round a circle doesn‘t ring of logic as I ride on tires,
bounce on springs, spin my feet in loops to loop
around the park in hula-hoop circles like a dervish whirling in religious trance.
Not that dervishes spout logic from stove-pipe hats-- their robes flung out in circles—
energy transferred from God to earth, right hand to left— twirling from mystical beginning to the end of their leg power, within a circle of circles and loop of loops that started with the swim of sperm
into the circular, muscular cervix, shot into the round egg,
plopped onto the round earth from the oblong womb,
until jets fly us around the round earth rockets soar us past a full moon
12 Swirl
The whorl from where hairs spin and descend to the inverted peak; where peak meets nape on a man‘s neck—
that tender vulnerable curve barbers trim and hone and fingertips graze
or loop in cogitative twirls, inward or spirals out to galaxies of dark matter.
13 Losses in the Park
The young man turned his face toward the girl and asked her plaintively if she could be the someone he had waited for. If she
would mind too much to be part of his world. The girlfriend ran her fingers through her hair considering its color, thickness, how
she‘d possibly afford a good cut now—
but turned her thoughts toward the question there. Nothing put her off as much as begging.
She knew she could attract another man,
so tapped his shoulder, shook her head, said, ―No,‖ rose from the bench, stretched and tugged her legging, smiled only as a leaving woman can,
14 Purity
If I could burn my skin coal black and swell
my lips three times their size, make the waves
of my hair kink, kinkier
than the tight threads of screws the heads of which
black angels dance upon, I‘d be pure again.
Those little black angels with brown-pillowed lips and hair so nappy
they never brush or comb it, robes so blue-black
Satan barely sees them singing Hallelujah
but pokes them with his pitchfork to ―Shut up, already.
I got to sleep to work my mischief! Damned black angels –
just like your mammies were in those plantation houses I lured them into.
And you got all washed out
into yella gals, caramel and café-au-lait. But dead and gone to heaven
15 Nightwork
Cypress branches paint thin shadows on blue-white frame-house columns at dusk, fade into the pale glow and become the stone they dress.
Trees and columns seem to hold the sky at bay, the house up.
Then night is pinned in place the way boys pin girls against walls
until veils fall, like the seventh one Salome dropped to earn the head of John the Baptist.
John said she was the child of sin. She urged his death for pleasure; would not heed the Baptist‘s warning to leave her parents‘ palace or lose her soul.
Still while the earth is in full moon outlines of phallic trees and poles uphold our blunders toward each other, and we are pulled by old forces
that unfold and enfold us.
Desire catches us in actions that unveil our souls,
could send them heavenward or to the other place.
16 Pious Grandiosity
I hope to jam the television, radio waves, ears and mouths of billions with word-fucks, pen-shits of glossalalia, to overrun lakes and rivers, seas and oceans with consonants and vowel-sound wows
to cover the Catskills, Blue Ridge, Rockies, Urals, K-1 with spray-painted dictums, so many cans emptied the Ozone hole ignites Australia, plunges it, Atlantis-like, into the depths and New Zealand dubs me poet laureate
to ascend a Maori throne, tattooed head to foot in my most famous odes, then walk over live coals to prove I can compose a sonnet on volcano goddesses, and on the 8,000-mile paddle to Pele‘s garden,
be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church
as dead and holy, an example of pious grandiosity.
Back in my outrigger, my strength flags
and I consume the final power bar before I walk pearl-black sands up Pele‘s sides to take the leap into eternity and worldwide regret over the loss of my voice due to the demons I couldn‘t overcome.
And as I look up from this crack in Earth‘s crust, the heat waves leathering my skin, flights
of punk-haired angels, every orifice pierced, flock to spirit me to my dream heaven –
fountains of fried chicken, 20-year-old scotch straight up, oysters on the half shell in hot sauce, horseradish,
rock‘n‘roll and Rastafarian hand-rolled blunts.
But I write in an old house, populated by Keats,
Byron, and Hughes. Sexton rides her broom and shakes
her booty, laughing – all knowing that God is likely Shakespeare, and none of us will take our rest until our pens are still.
And maybe if we slide to hell, not even then.
For hell means to do the thing we love until love is worn off like the nacre of a pearl,
17
18 Bicycling Drunk
On black pearl sands of Kalamea smoldering drunk on Strawberry Hill – $1.25 a bottle and we had six
among us five howlies – OK, Andre was Japanese, but we never counted him he was so chill.
We rode the cliffs
banana-seat bikes souped up to pop wheelies
half a them scavenged from the dump
or someone‘s sister‘s so Charlie‘s was pink,
but he was a big motherfucker and no one teased him
on account a that.
We stayed wasted teeter-tottering along the bluffs and playing chicken until Gregory lobbed off the side and split his head then it gushed a red that wasn‘t real we were so blurred.
He called my mom a slut and Edgar‘s too until we told him shut the fuck up
or we‘d leave him there.
It took the four of us to wrestle him, the skinny bastard, flailing at us, swinging wild, and even Charlie
dropped his ass and said, ―Oh fuck him! Leave him here to bleed to death.‖
And Gregory howled inside the circle of us. ―Ma‘s a fucking whore! That bitch. I‘ll kill her. Thirty-dollar cunt for sale. Two tricks an hour pays rent and groceries. Where‘s she when I bust my head? Her legs are open!‖
19 Greg lost a tooth and broke a kneecap,
halfway cracked his skull.
20 McComb, Mississippi Excavations
Grandpa told that girl she shouldn‘t drive – not ladylike to grab a wheel,
handle a large vehicle; less so to spread your legs the way Aunt Anastasia had.
So the fetus ended pickled in the jar, then buried in the back yard.
Every other weekend we chose a spot to dig up looking for the little girl – the fruit of Anastasia and the man who sullied her.
We whispered ―sullied‖ gently ‗cause we liked our maiden aunt, though Telly spread his legs
and crossed his eyes in that vulgar way pretending he was coming with a flourish of flapping arms and writhing hips.
Telly was a fool and ended up in prison for sullying a younger boy. We liked him, too, though,
and forgave his slip. He never laughed after they let him out. This drained the joy from digging.
At last we gave up, thinking someone else would suffer
like Anastasia, Telly or the fetus girl. I dream of her hair ribbons
drifting in that jar, the scent
21 In the Hardware Store, 1962
The nails could fit my hand, I thought, as the clerk eyed me with suspicion – I was alone at bins that towered over me crammed with three-penny, six-penny nails.
―May I help you?‖ he asked, unsmiling, folding his arms in a cloud of doubt: What little Negro girl needed nails?
―I‘d like 20 six-penny finish nails,‖ I said, in my firmest 6-year-old voice.
Daddy had schooled his child, sent a sample if I forgot. I squeezed it tight in my hand. Didn‘t show it.
We‘d been here many times. I‘d fingered nails,
examined shine and color, shaft thickness, knew ―finish‖ meant finer carpentry
than ―framing.‖ You see the finish, though framing needs to be just as true.
The vendor bent to my three-foot height. ―You sure girl?‖ he said, annoyed. It was my first time by myself, around the corner from my house. I held out the gunmetal-gray, slim nail, its red line marked my palm.
―Like this one. Daddy sent it.‖
I pressed my lips into a thin line. Knew my mission.
―Yes, indeed,‖ he said more friendly-like, pulled himself to his full height, smiled, then glanced back at me a second while he counted nails and I watched.
―That‘s 17, mister. You forgot three.‖ He blushed, recounted.
22 That‘s a lucky number. No extra charge.‖
He thought me stupid, I supposed.
But I kept quiet, handed him four bits, got the sales slip, change, and counted it slowly
as he watched, mouth agape. ―Thank you,‖ I said, nodding.
23 Delinquent
He never lies about where he is, a wrong place
the wrong time-- though angry I forgive
because I bore him 14 years ago and his mind is mixed up, thoughts aquiver.
His brain sparks errantly, flits like a butterfly from video games
to sprints out the front door.
He likes to laugh and makes me too when he recalls the joke.
He never aims to misstep. Smiles, curls, compacts into me as I lounge on the sofa— still long-limbed and slim. Seeks the old affection now and then:
a hug, a kiss. Calls for them
in bed early mornings, or late nights, half-dreaming his child-self.
I weave synaptic safety nets— me, the old spider,
seeing him spurt and flail as aerialist, knowing fearlessness
in children shields and sinks them.
Do I eat or free him? The practice
24 Listen Here
I suspect attention deficit is a form of autism: sufferers rub raw from too much input. Yet music is his bridge. He drinks it, talks about it constantly: names, artists, songs.
Yet my boy often forgets the shortest factual list— too much information— or can‘t judge when it‘s time to stop laughing at a joke, even when other kids do.
Still teachers note:
He‘s so ―bright, so smart.‖ And his charm makes them like my half-grown son. This is lucky.
I think of Van Gogh— brilliant artist
lacking social skills. He chose an asylum over the world for peace to heal and paint.
And I don‘t know how hard it is for my son to navigate such details. Don‘t want him to hack off bits of himself in despair.
So, I‘m rooted here aching to listen for his music.
I offer instruments
25 Purpose
Daddy told me he could see German faces across the Rhine through frosted air:
the coldest winter in living memory.
U.S. soldiers burned gasoline on the ground to keep warm, the black plumes raising a curtain of soot
between enemies in the snow.
Though daddy worked motor pool, he too lay along the banks, rifle in hand. No one shot anyone, he said.
―We all just wanted to get home alive.‖
He was 19, 20, they were too— he remembered gumbo from home, they, streusel, if their mothers‘ kitchens weren‘t bombed to dust by 1945.
Daddy soldiers on,
takes my 14-year-old to school, tells me to check my engine oil,
says, he didn‘t mean to just get home alive. He meant to live with purpose.
And he‘s helped his dying mom and wife; his living daughter and grandson.
26 Roll Bones
Marty was a man‘s man, big and handsome, as strong as my ferocious mother
who barely knows she‘s wed to him and can‘t change his diapers.
The blessing is their memories‘ gone
and mother‘s drugged through midnight groanings of remembered racetracks, craps and Vegas slots.
Asleep, he flings his good left arm, shoots long-lost bones across the room to ricochet off the wall, land on the carpet and roll snake eyes to my feet.
When he‘s awake and clearer, his rheumy eyes water at me,
then he muses, ―Who woulda thought a man like me would come to this?‖
I peruse his right thigh stump, lost foot, and greet the sitter who lets himself in, unsure of how to comfort my father or tell him where his manhood lies.
In dreams, I see an armless, legless self strapped to a wheelchair so I play the slots by tapping forehead, chin. Blind, I listen for the clicks to tell me if I‘ve hit before coins pile and clatter.
A waitress crushes breasts against me to help me sip my complimentary drink, but tips me on an angle, spilling
gin onto my crotch. ―Sir, I‘m so sorry.‖
She blots, and as she rights me, I feel my absurd prick stiffen
as she daubs, diaper lining crackling in distension. ―Sir!‖ She gasps, moving her hands away to deal me silence.
27 Tethers
The blood leaks in small spasms from her lips and mouth like Kool-Aid. Her eyes roll with her moans
and intrusions of the suction tube.
This is my mother‘s death in a room that‘s not hers four floors in the air.
At the nurse‘s station the doctor says, ―All her systems are shutting down,‖ his voice desperate, searching. He pores over the steel chart hoping to conjure solutions. I feel sorry for him.
I lean onto the counter as he reads.
―I wish you could‘ve seen her,‖ I say smiling, ―When she held my son on her lap.
He was 1 or 2. She was so proud. So many of her students tell me she was their best teacher,‖ I pause.
―There‘s nothing else,‖ I say. ―No more to cure.‖ He looks up, blank, as I go back.
In her room my father suctions scarlet spittle and we listen for words to understand. There are none to filter among wheezing machines, gurgles and the beep
of the heart monitor. Daddy sighs, then says, ―Let her go,‖—just like that.
28
29 Bombardier, 1944
for Randall Jarrell
I pressed the button and the wind‘s whirr past the cylinder
was like the pure sound pushed past puckered lips when Harvey whizzed the baseball hair-close to my ear to spook me.
Harvey was a mean girl, and I grew up to be an evil man—
dropping metal shards on would-be
little leaguers.
What a death!
Their shriveled lips were split and bloodied.
I saw the photographs: piles of pale corpses with beribboned braids-- in blue gingham and white, lace-edged anklets.
30 Balance
On wire 3/4ths of an inch thick, Philippe Petit tightroped between
the World Trade Centers eight times in 1974 when he and they were young:
the tallest buildings on earth; the highest walker.
He had danced between towers of Notre Dame in his homeland, slid slippered feet above girders on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in plain, black catsuit,
the bending balance pole in hand, serious as a priest at Mass.
He called it his ―poetry in the sky,‖ a passion he took up on his own in late adolescence:
not stunt, nor circus act, but ‗theatre and art.‘
There was no reason to it. It was unfathomable as ballet, writing or a master painting: something out of nothing,
31 A 21st Century Crime Report
Gasoline cities-- no sidewalks so people singed by hubcap pain till they frown:
No black, white, brown, just charred flesh.
Fried hair kinks into knots,
shrinks into afros, so plenty people perm they hair straight to look regular.
People so burnt can‘t see ‗em at night. News reports roving rapist attacks. Some smell of ammonia
hair-straightenin‘ kits.
Unfried folks feel scared cause they know the fuckin‘ comin‘ from gasoline-car-rape- hair-straightened-felons, crazy-stuck
32 Eye
Walled by winds, nothing stirs. Silence like the peace
of armistices—momentary.
Sitting inside, dry, unruffled the boy is lulled into complacence: cat‘s asleep in his lap,
dog snorts in the corner dreaming, lights flicker back on. His head nods.
The last half of the storm‘s left to raise hairs on the nape of his neck, start the dog baying and the cat skittering beneath the couch to escape the sweep
of his father‘s heavy hand.
Dad isn‘t home, so he dreams the fear of the hand‘s recoil, its slap,
tough as the bite of leather, he‘s felt before.
It‘s the unknown beating hanging in the air, promised,
33 In Transit
The people at bus stops look drab, drained, older than their years.
In busses no bubble exists to insulate one passenger from the misery of another.
Soaked, we smell like stray dogs: the damp odor permeating
too-conditioned air. We often need sweaters in summer to ride.
A man spills milk from a grocery bag, another, his pants cinched tight, reeks of urine. One repeatedly sits next to me on this route. There‘s something odd about his blank expression. He presses me to the wall. There are empty seats elsewhere. I‘m trapped.
He never speaks, nor do I.
I choose a window hoping to see out, but it‘s as soiled as the passengers: the view dusty, distorted—
as poor as the buses are late, so riders plug in music,
talk on phones, play computer games to pass the time in this ferry
to worlds we‘re forced to, and to some we choose.
The route is Elysian Fields, the final resting place of the heroic and virtuous. But I think I see Charon the driver in sunglasses,
34 Public Intersection
It‘s no wonder we wrap up in cars, alone for the silence, or lack of people who might sit next to us and reek of perfume, alcohol.
A young man next to me on the trolley, neat as a hip-hop pinup,
tells a tale out of school to a cell-phone buddy:
how he slammed this ―ho‘s‖ head into the wall the day after Mardi Gras, ― ‗Cause bra, she liked it rough.‖
And it‘d be fine if this titillated me, his bragging of sexual prowess, him, all of 20, 22.
That this is his best boast merely saddens me. He calls the woman ‗ho,‘
feels it important to make it clear he‘s rough-and-tumble in bed. Paints it base and pornographic, because he knows no better, or maybe, that was all it was.
If he were in his car, music blaring, would he tell the story differently, with no audience?
Did he leave money
35 Mugging
He‘d had too many drinks, for late and dark—
so dark he hardly saw the young man‘s face that mottled into shadow: eyes skittish,
flicking side to side,
whites yellowish and rheumy.
He heard him sniff and mumble something, knew it wasn‘t anything worth hearing.
―I said to give it up.‖ The youth cleared his throat but barely whispered, pointed something at the white boy‘s waist.
The college boy weighed options: saw the hand pretending
to be gun was shaking,
saw how thin and young the mugger was, knew he had 30 pounds of muscle on him— slapped him sharp across the face.
The youth yowled, owww, held his cheek
in pain and disbelief,
and wild-eyed, spun and sprinted off.
College heard him sniffle half a block away, fell to his knees, leaned,
36 Wounds
This is winter in broken New Orleans— five years gone from Hurricane Katrina. So much promised:
Yet shabby, damaged houses sink further into disrepair, and more and more are razed: Black windows stare accusingly.
The city sags under millions in debt, hemorrhaging from demographic shifts to suburbs, and prosperous cities. We are America‘s Venice:
levees unguaranteed, storm plans shaky, an old guard dead; the new struggling.
In my grandfather‘s cemetery, few place flowers and clean graves on All Saints Day,
though I remember picnics
sweeping and whitewashing crypts.
Families were Italian, Irish, black and Creole Catholics performing the ritual of remembrance.
At 85, my dad is too old to climb and clean the 12-foot tomb where my mother rests and he expects to lie, but leaves flowers. And I have not made my teen-age son clean it as tradition warrants,
37
References/Bibliography
The references for this thesis are noted within the Preface. As it is a collection of the
author‘s poems, it does not require extensive supporting scholarship other than those works
38 Vita
Ann Plicque was born and raised in New Orleans, La., a bit more than 50 years ago.
Her mother was a high school English teacher who died in 2006. Her father, a retired postal
worker, is alive and well at 85 and drives her 14-year-old son to or from school nearly daily.
He and her mother have given her a deep sense of family, place and belonging to her culture,
which includes African-American, American Indian, French, Spanish and German roots—in
other words, the ubiquitous Creole gumbo of New Orleans. She speaks a little French and
Spanish and has visited Paris and the Yucatan.
Her family stressed education as a key to success and she believes this and tries to instill
these same values in her son. She was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic grammar
and high schools. She would call herself spiritual these days.
Though she attended The University of New Orleans and Louisiana State universities
after high school, she earned her bachelor‘s degree in 1986 from Northern Illinois
University, in the suburban Chicago area, in Journalism. She spent more than a decade being
bored as a copy editor at a mid-sized Texas paper and later at The Times-Picayune in New
Orleans. This is not to say the staff were boring: Quite the contrary. The work was
tedious and uncreative, but news people at both papers were colorful and talented.
Ann edited her grammar school newspaper and wrote poetry as a child, as
well as in college. She decided to return to school for a masters in this first love. She has
won the Vassar Millar poetry prize in 2008, and the Academy of American Poets Award in 2007
and 2008 at her university level. She has two honorable mentions in the Vassar Miller contest in
2009 and 2010. and an honorable mention in 2010 from the Academy of American Poets.
